AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

It seems odd that the neoconservatives seem to be backing an Iranian that, for all intents and purposes, has been their mortal enemy for around three decades, but it is the case that throughout history that international politics has turned out some strange bedfellows. It reminds me a bit of what happened in the last century: In order to kick off World War Two, Hitler found it necessary to get into bed with Stalin. The situation today isn’t quite as dramatic as that but, nonetheless, there are distinct parallels – or at least so it seems.

Even before all the votes had been tallied in Iran toward the end of a long election day on Friday, 12 June, Ahmadinejad’s main rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, claimed victory, as, indeed, had Ahmadinejad. But then, unlike Mousavi, Ahmadinejad had good reason to claim early victory; with votes being counted throughout the day, it soon became apparent that Ahmadinejad was a clear leader and way in front of Mousavi. Ahmadinejad had every reason to claim an early victory while Mousavi had none at all. Then, on Saturday when it was officially announced that Ahmadinejad had in fact won the election, and by around the same margin that the pre-election polls had predicted, Mousavi immediately cried ‘foul’ and, almost on cue, seemingly spontaneously, the massive demonstrations began on the streets of Tehran and by nightfall Saturday rioters supposedly supporting Mousavi were setting fire to dumpsters and vehicles.

Instantly the Western right-wing media were on to the turmoil and backing Mousavi’s claim that the elections had been rigged. The media began to talk up a ‘popular revolution’ in Iran concentrating their efforts on highlighting the pro-Mousavi demonstrations and ignoring entirely the equally massive demonstrations being held in support of Ahmadinejad. So keen were the Western media to support the Mousavi camp they even used a picture of a massive Ahmadinejad rally and claimed it was of a pro-Mousavi rally.

But all was not as it seemed. Rather than seeming to be spontaneous, the demonstrations and rallies had all the hallmarks of being highly organised. Placards had been professionally produced in large numbers and written in English as well as Farsi. They were distributed through the crowds and clearly made for Western consumption. Some serious money was behind the effort and it was obvious that many of these had been produced before the elections and readied for post-election protests that were clearly organised prior to the election.

While the vast majority of the protestors and demonstrators from both camps were peaceful, there were among the Mousavi protestors provocateurs determined to provoke violence by running riot and setting fire to vehicles and buildings while wearing the green colours representing the Mousavi camp. The Western media have been portraying these violent and destructive elements as somehow being the vanguard of a revolution or brave freedom fighters confronting the police and security forces.

However, lurking beneath the superficial Western presentation of populist Iranian discontent are far more complex issues that govern what is really going on in Iran today.

Essentially Iran remains an Islamic state which the vast majority of Iranians, regardless of whether they’re for Ahmadinejad or Mousavi, still support. Rather than being a battle between Islamist-style government supporters and secular western-style government supporters as the Western media is trying to portray the unrest, it is actually about a class struggle between the ‘have-not masses’ that generally support Ahmadinejad and the young modern well-to-do, but still Islamic, ‘haves’ that support Mousavi.

The Western media would like to present to the Western peoples a picture of the beginnings of a popular uprising and revolution in Iran and have relentlessly used all of its propaganda resources to achieve this belief even down to the filming of the attractive young Iranian girl who lay dying in the streets; killed, at least so we are told, by brutal Iranian security forces for no other reason than she was protesting. No matter how or why she died, there can be excuse for her death; but to assert that her death represents the spirit of revolt against the government is to cynically abuse her death for purely propaganda purposes. And the West has not thought twice about so doing. Even President Obama has used her death for propaganda purposes

However, it is not just Obama that has used the young girl’s death for propaganda purposes. While the Western media would like to portray the unrest in Iran as the beginnings of a populist revolution against the Mullah’s, what may turn out to be the real reason for the unrest has emerged.

This last week has seen the claimant to the Iranian throne appear from the wings. All but forgotten, the son of the late Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has finally shown himself. At a Press Club gathering in Washington last Monday, Pahlavi produced a photo of the dead girl and, with tears in his eyes, told the world, “I have added her to the list of my daughters. She is now forever in my pocket”. One can take ones choice as to which metaphor is appropriate with the remark: ‘She is now forever in my pocket’. The point is; Reza’s late father, deposed in the Iranian Revolution of 1979, was one of the world’s most ruthless and brutal dictators who, like his father before him, detested the very idea of ‘democracy’. Reza Pahlavi is unlikely to be any different despite all his talk of ‘democracy’. To top it off, demonstrations in the US by Iranian expatriates, have been flying the old Iranian flag of the Shah. These flags have clearly been recently made and stored and have been distributed for use in carefully orchestrated pro-Shah rallies outside of Iran. The question one now needs to ask is: Since it is clear that the idea of a ‘popular revolution’ is merely a figment of the propagandists imagination, is there a possibility that Israel, the US and the UK could bring on a coup d’état that would see Reza Pahlavi restored to power leading a quasi-democratic pro-Western puppet government?

It’s doubtful this would happen, but one can almost hear the right-wing Western political mind ticking as it mulls the idea over and read between the lines of what neocon Reuel Marc Gerecht is trying to say in his ‘Weekly Standard’ article.

Monday, June 22, 2009

For the right-wing Western media it is really unimportant who won the election in Iran; the important thing is that the resulting turmoil, chaos, and deaths works against the ruling Mullah’s and in favour, no matter how little, of the right-wing of Israel and the US and their supporters in Iran. Greg Sheridan, a Murdoch propagandist with The Australian newspaper, sums it up: “In many ways, a savagely weakened Iranian regime is the best result Israel and the US could have wished for.” Democracy per se, as far as the right-wing are concerned, actually has very little to do with it as long as it’s a good ‘result for Israel and the US’.

It’s quite clear that the reaction to the announcement of the results of the election were planned in advance well before the election took place. Some pre-election polls had Ahmadinejad well in front by some 2-1 so the outcome, contrary to what the Western media would have us believe, wasn’t exactly a surprise to anyone.

However, since the likely outcome was not entirely unexpected, it gave the opposition an opportunity to plan a false claim to election victory, a claim which they voiced as soon as the polls closed. And then when the results were announced, they simply cried ‘foul’. All of this has been helped along by the right-wing Western media who supported the opposition’s claims by focusing the news on the opposition’s rallies and demonstrations against Ahmadinejad and ignoring the pro-Ahmadinejad rallies which were on some occasions much bigger than those of the supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi. So desperate were the Western media to push the pro-Mousavi cause they even, on at least one occasion, actually claimed that pictures of a massive pro-Ahmadinejad rally were of a pro-Mousavi rally.

It’s quite clear that agent provocateurs have been employed to push along the oppositions agenda. They have encouraged the violence on all sides by provoking the police and by setting fire to buses, cars, motorbikes and buildings. The Western media have claimed that the authorities have violently cracked down on dissenting demonstrators when in fact they have been cracking down on those that have set fires and been running riot. The vast majority of both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi demonstrators have been peaceful. It is only the anti-Mullahs professional agent provocateurs that have stirred up the trouble by running riot and setting the fires and claiming to be supporters of Mousavi.

For the right-wing of the US and Israel, as Murdoch propagandist Greg Sheridan infers, it doesn’t matter whether Ahmadinejad or Mousavi end up getting the nod, nor does it matter how many Iranians have to die in the process, the important thing is that it stirs up trouble for the Mullahs.

For the Israelis it’s just another step along the road toward their final confrontation with Iran.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Ever since last Friday’s election in Iran and the announcement that President Ahmadinejad was the clear winner, rumours have been flying that the elections were rigged. Over the last four days since the announcement, demonstrations by Iranians who supported the opposition candidate, the comparatively ‘moderate’ Mir Hossein Mousavi, have been on the streets of Tehran in force setting light to buses, trucks and buildings and engaging in running street battles with the police that have resulted in the death of at least one demonstrator.

As yet, however, there has been no actual hard evidence of any vote tampering or irregularities though the Mullahs have authorised an investigation into the claims. The big question is; how does one ‘rig’ such a massive election? With over 39 million people casting votes, there are so many people involved in the tallying process that any fraud as massive as that being claimed by the opposition would have been spotted instantly by the election authorities and, more importantly, the thousands of volunteer and temporary staff that were working for them around the country on the day. There would have been no way that frauds that massive could have been kept quiet so, one wonders, why bother attempting it?

The Western media have made the most of the post-election turmoil in Iran having backed a Mousavi win in the hope of triggering a ‘regime change’ that would see a government more friendly toward the West and Israel come into power and possibly even overthrowing the Mullahs from their peak power positions or, at least, putting a severe dent in their power. Some Western mainstream media are now even pushing the idea of another ‘revolution’ in Iran.

However, while the opposition rallies and protest demonstrations are extremely well organised and are clearly not at all spontaneous as some have reported with placards and flags being well-designed and professionally mass produced and obviously aimed at a Western audience with many of the placards written in English as well as Farsi, all may well be not what it seems.

The Western media generally, after years of demonising Ahmadinejad, have little option but to support his slightly more moderate opposition, Mousavi. But how much more ‘moderate’ is he?

If the US and Israel think that Mousavi is going to be any the less supportive of Hamas and Hezbollah or more tolerant toward Zionism and Israeli aggression toward the Palestinian people than Ahmadinejad then they are in for rude awakening. Furthermore, Mousavi is as much a supporter of Iran’s nuclear program as Ahmadinejad is – and is as equally insistent that there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program. In short, from Iran’s foreign policy point of view there is no difference between the two. Their differences are in their domestic policies with Mousavi being a little more tolerant of women playing a greater part in the affairs of Iran.

The Mullah’s probably care little which of them become president, but, because the Mullah’s are promising an enquiry, some time has time has been bought which might well be enough to see the backlash against Ahmadinejad simply run out of steam.

There has been at least one death in the protests since the elections and the demonstrations have been massive but when weighed against the kind of violence India has every time it goes to the polls where hundreds routinely die in riots and demonstrations, Iran’s post election demonstrations and protests have been relatively tame.

The Mullah’s will continue to run Iran and either Ahmadinejad or Mousavi will help them. The regime will not change. It’s still on Israel’s agenda regardless of who gets up in the end.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Yesterday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his much awaited speech in response to US President Obama’s call for a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu’s response was predictable. Knowing that the conditions he would put on accepting a Palestinian state could not possibly be met by the Palestinian people he outlined the circumstances under which he could accept the existence of a separate Palestinian state. Netanyahu knew that all Obama wanted to hear was ‘yes’ to a two state solution. It’s a win for Obama because that’s all he wanted to hear; the conditions mean nothing to him at this stage – all Obama wanted was a political win on the basic concept.

And, of course, it’s a win for Netanyahu because he knows that his conditions of accepting a Palestinian state are way beyond what the Palestinians will be willing to accept. His Zionist followers will be able to rest easy knowing that under Netanyahu, creating a Palestinian state will be impossible. What will now follow, as always, are endless talks that, again as always, will resolve absolutely nothing. Already the Palestinian leadership are outraged at Netanyahu’s offer. Netanyahu has demanded that a future Palestinian state be demilitarised and recognise Israel as a Jewish state. No sooner uttered, these demands are doomed to put an end to any notion of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu re-emphasised his alternative approach to relations with the Palestinians via the gift box of economic ties but, again, he knows this will never happen. Israel has its own economic problems right now without trying to sort out the massive economic problems the Palestinians have. Long term economic commitments aren’t going to solve the vast political differences and Netanyahu knows it.

Netanyahu himself outlines the bottom line of the problem. He says: “Even as we look toward the horizon, we must be firmly connected to reality, to the truth. And the simple truth is that the root of the conflict was, and remains, the refusal to recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own, in their historic homeland.”

That, indeed, is the reality and the truth. The problem is that the Jewish people that seek a homeland want it to include land that does not belong to them. Many Zionists, Netanyahu and many of his political allies in his government amongst them, believe that their ‘historic homeland’, a Greater Israel, includes all of Judea and Samaria together with Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, not to mention all the lands they took beyond that which the UN gave them in 1948. To demand of the Palestinians that they say: “Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and it will stay that way” is to ask the impossible – and Netanyahu knows it. Why on earth would the Palestinians say: “We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in this land, and we are prepared to live beside you in true peace” as Netanyahu demands? It’s just not going to happen especially when Netanyahu speaks of “…the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel has lasted for more than 3,500 years.” Then goes on to say: “Judea and Samaria, the places where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David and Solomon, and Isaiah and Jeremiah lived, are not alien to us. This is the land of our forefathers.”

Then, just to ensure that the Palestinians never agree to Israel’s demands, Netanyahu says: “It is impossible to expect us to agree in advance to the principle of a Palestinian state without assurances that this state will be demilitarized.” One can be sure that it will be equally impossible for the Palestinian people to agree to such a principle. A sovereign state is one that is free to defend itself and demand that its airspace is regarded also as sovereign. A sovereign state being allowed to exist only upon the conditions and demands of another sovereign state is no sovereign state at all – and Netanyahu knows that.

All that Netanyahu has succeeded in doing with his speech is buy more time for the Zionists to find some other way of fulfilling their dream of creating a Greater Israel. He has also been able to offer Obama a flicker of political hope that will ultimately achieve absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

The reality is that the US and Israel and their Western allies couldn’t care less who the President of Iran is; the Mullah’s actually run the country and it is the Mullah’s who provide the support, through whoever the Iranian people elect to be their President, to Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Israeli Arabs, and it is that which drives the propaganda and rhetoric against Iran.

Not unpredictably, the accusations are now flying thick and fast that Ahmadinejad’s overwhelming victory at the polls was as a result of voter fraud. Such accusations in the West are simply a knee-jerk reaction in an effort to counter what is an even bigger victory for Ahmadinejad; the massive propaganda boost he gets from having won the election so convincingly and proving himself to be such a populist President. The Western media in the lead-up to the elections pushed along the so-called ‘moderate’ that stood for election highlighting the massive rallies that supported the opposition ‘moderate’ candidate but failed to highlight the even bigger rallies that were held in support of Ahmadinejad, at least one being so big that it was considered wise for Ahmadinejad not to show up least it became a security risk, as if pushing the ‘moderate’ in the Western press was actually going to influence voters in Iran. The bottom line is; the Iranian people have shown their overwhelming support for Ahmadinejad and, in doing so, have also shown their support for the Mullah’s and the Palestinian and Arab cause against Israeli Zionism.

But, ultimately, nothing has changed as far as the Israelis and their Western allies are concerned. Iran, by its support of Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Arab Israelis, is still all that stands between the Zionists and the realisation of their dream of a Greater Israel. Iran’s continued and quite legitimate program to enrich uranium for use in power generation will remain the center of attention for the Israeli and Western right-wing propagandists attempt to demonise Iran with the Israelis hoping that they will be successful in convincing the world that Iran seeks nuclear weapons and is intent on using them against Israel. Such a threat will eventually become the excuse the Israelis need to attack Iran and bring about ‘regime change’ with the help of the US.

Since Obama became US president, the Israelis have been somewhat frustrated in their push to get the world to support an attack against Iran despite upping the tempo of their propaganda and rhetoric against Iran and Ahmadinejad and their so-called nuclear weapons program. Despite their unrelenting insistence that Iran, indeed, is seeking nuclear weapons, Israel has failed to provide the world with any evidence whatsoever that supports their claims. Even US support of these claims is now half-hearted with recent IAEA reports and US National Intelligence Estimates reports failing to find any hard evidence at all of a nuclear weapons program or evidence of enrichment beyond that needed for power generation.

The only benefit the Israelis have from an Ahmadinejad win is that they don’t have to start all over again to demonise a comparatively unknown new ‘moderate’ Iranian president; they can now simply can get on with demonising the one they already know so well with the hope that affairs in the Middle East might be so manipulated that there will arise just the excuse they need to attack Iran and their other enemies.

Ahmadinejad’s re-election to the Iranian presidency has changed nothing as far as the Israelis are concerned. However, his re-election by such a spectacular margin does demonstrate that, contrary to Western propaganda, Iran is still a proud Islamic nation that supports its president’s stand against Israeli and Western pressures and supports the Palestinian and Arab peoples fight against Zionist aggression and occupation.

Ahmadinejad and the hierarchy of the Iranian government have shown that they have the support of the Iranian people. While Israel and the neocons once believed it might be able to attack the Iranian government and trigger another Iranian revolution against the Mullah’s and the theocratic state, they now know that such an attack against Iran will serve only to galvanise the people of Iran against Israel in particular and the West generally.

Where will the Israeli and US propaganda spin head now? Watch out for accusations of collusion between ‘al Qaeda’ and Iran and increasing Iranian ‘interference’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There will be more stories emerging about Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah particularly with supplies of rockets and other armaments. The search for a casus belli to attack Iran will increase in pace and if Israel can’t find an excuse, be assured they’ll eventually create one.

Meanwhile, the Israelis and their right-wing Western allies are hoping that the disappointment of the supporters of the losing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, will spill over into some kind of popular uprising against the government. No doubt agent provocateurs from Israel and their allies will be in Tehran doing all they can to stir unrest in the capital.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Arthur Herman, a neoconservative, has written an article entitled ‘The Gitmo Myth and the Torture Canard’ in which he attempts to justify the use of torture arguing, quite predictably, that such methods of interrogation give results. To prove his argument Herman provides the example of one so-called al Qaeda captive, Muhammad el-Qahtani who, Herman claims, is a Saudi national who was captured by U.S. forces on the border Pakistan and Afghanistan border in December 2001 and who, after intensive interrogation, “…picked out pictures of all nineteen of the 9/11 hijackers and called out their names—and admitted that he, not Zacarias Moussaoui, had been slated to be the twentieth hijacker”.

The problem with this story is that, as Herman reveals himself in his article, el-Qahtani didn’t divulge this ‘information’ until January 2003. By this time it was a well established fact that the names didn’t actually match the faces of at least seven of the supposed hijackers of the 9/11 aircraft since seven of those that the FBI originally named were still alive.

If el-Qahtani really was so intimately involved with the events of 9/11 as Herman suggests then he would have either have been able to have put the real names against the faces of the photographs he was shown of those who were accused of the hijackings or, alternatively, have told his interrogators that seven of the photos he was shown did not match the names of the hijackers he knew. If the hijackers really had stolen the identities of those that remain alive, el-Qahtani would have known about it. Herman can’t have it both ways; el-Qahtani either knew all of the names or knew all of the faces but he couldn’t possibly have put the names to the faces unless he’d been told to by his interrogators or simply told them what they wanted to hear having known before capture the names and faces the FBI had already put out – in which case, of course, Herman has undone his own argument in which he asserts torture works.

There is an emerging trend of demonising the anti-extreme right-wing that seems to be well co-ordinated, particularly among the neoconservative commentariat of the Murdoch press, which has been triggered by the incident at the Holocaust Memorial in the US a few days ago. Not unsurprisingly, this new tactic revolves around the Judeo-centric ideology of modern neoconservatism whereby the aim is to deflect accusations of ‘Zionism being racism’ being made against Zionists and their neoconservative supporters.

The Zionists and their neoconservative supporters throughout the world – and especially within Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Empire – have embarked on a campaign of attacking all who are left of center in an effort to demonise those that are, and were, activist against Zionism and their neoconservative supporters and against the neoconservative foreign policies of the Bush administration.

The incident at the Holocaust Memorial at first confused the extreme right-wing commentators, especially those Murdoch propagandists that work outside of the US. They seemed perturbed that the negative outpouring from ordinary people around the world over the actions of the white supremacist Nazi James Von Brunn, clearly a right-wing extremist, might rub off on Zionists and their neoconservative allies who have over the past nine years been well known for being right-wing and often considered right-wing extremists themselves.

They seem now to have come up with a co-ordinated tactic of deflecting these accusations which, in the light of Von Brunn’s actions, has exposed the Islamophobic and racist nature of Zionism and neoconservatism.

Their tactic works like this: While demonising Von Brunn who is clearly an anti-Semite and, therefore, an anti-Zionist as well but for different reasons entirely from those on the left, grab the opportunity of demonising all on the left who are also anti-Zionist and cast them in the same mould as the neo-Nazi anti-Semites – and while they’re at it, take the opportunity, as Glenn Beck on Murdoch’s Fox News has, to demonise the so-called ‘9/11 Truthers’ as well.

This is a tactic that has now been taken up by the rest of Murdoch’s propagandists all over the world. Some of Murdoch’s propagandist’s bloggies have even gone so far as to suggest that Nazism is Socialism because Hitler called his party National Socialist and, therefore, all those on the left that are anti-Zionist must be Nazis.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, has put his country on a firm war footing and has recently completed a 5-day military drill, ominously named “Turning Point Three”, in which ‘Israeli forces and civilians prepared themselves for a simultaneous war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran and practiced counterinsurgency tactics against Israeli Arabs’. At the end of the drill Barak was quoted as saying last Tuesday: “The IDF's future operations will be broader and more demanding in terms of their scope and pace, with more risks than Operation Cast Lead”.

While Middle Eastern media headline space has been taken up with the impasse between Netanyahu and Obama over settlements in the West Bank, the exercise quietly went ahead with little fanfare in the Western mainstream media. However, the impasse over the issue of settlements and Israel’s massive war footing exercise are intrinsically linked.

The Israeli Zionists will not give up their claims to the settlements nor, indeed, their claims for the entire West Bank which they call Judea and Samaria. For hard core Zionists, Judea and Samaria are at the very core of Zionist and Likud party ideology as is the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and south Lebanon up to the Litani River, all of which for the Zionists, will become part of Greater Israel. Standing between the Zionists and their dream of a Greater Israel is Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and the Israeli Arabs; hence the simulated simultaneous war against them.

As always, the Israelis will wait until some casus belli presents itself for them to justify such a war, and, no doubt, if no casus belli materialises from their enemies, then the Israelis will invent one. Since of late the political atmosphere between Iran and the US has eased while the atmosphere between Israel and the US have become strained over the settlements issue, it seems likely that any casus belli that does arise that leads to Israel attacking any of its enemies will be as a result of some manipulated incident or straight out false flag attack against Israel or the US where the finger will be pointed to any one of Israel’s enemies and, of course, Iran.

Much will hinge on tomorrows Presidential elections in Iran and how Ahmadinejad will fare in those elections but the world should not be lulled into a false sense of security if a more moderate candidate gets up and defeats Ahmadinejad. No matter who wins the Presidency in Iran it will still be the Mullahs that will be pulling the strings and they are unlikely to relinquish their support of Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas no matter who wins. In other words, the basic status quo between Israel and Iran will stay the same. Iran will continue to support the Arabs and Palestinians against Israel and Israel will continue to dream of their Greater Israel and continue to see Iran as a hindrance to that dream.

Little will change. Israel will still seek its final confrontation with its enemies.

And when the final confrontation does come, Obama will side with Israel.

Friday, June 05, 2009

Israeli MK Aryeh Eldad, of the extreme right-wing Zionist National Union party, was quoted in Arutz Sheva Israel National News yesterday as saying:

“Obama makes a shocking parallel between the destruction of European Jewry and the suffering that the Arabs of Israel brought upon themselves when they declared war on Israel. If Obama does not understand the difference between them, perhaps he will understand it better when he visits the Buchenwald concentration camp in the comings days. And if he doesn’t understand it even there, then Islam will once again teach it to him, just as it taught his predecessor on 9/11.”

Eldad is clearly saying that, if Obama doesn’t come on side with Israel then ‘Islam’ could very well do another 9/11 job on the US. However, since we now know that there is a whole lot more to the 9/11 story than the simplistic ‘Islam did it’ meme to the point that it now seems that, at the very least, if ‘Islam did it’ then they did it in conjunction with people who had far more skills and influence than Islam alone could possibly have ever mustered, then Eldad’s threat needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

For most people on the planet the destruction of WTC7 and the latest evidence showing traces of Thermite or a related demolition product being found in the rubble of WTC1&2 has become the clincher that is swinging more and more people away from the official conspiracy theory of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden having been solely responsible. Most logical thinking people have come to the conclusion, as unpalatable as it may be, that forces far more powerful than Islamic extremists were responsible for 9/11. Could it be that Eldad is so familiar with those forces that he is confident enough to make the kind of thinly veiled threat that he has?

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Relations between Israel and the US seem to have come to some kind of impasse since Netanyahu became Prime Minister of Israel. While Obama is insisting that Israel freeze settlements in the West Bank as a prelude to talks about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel, under Netanyahu’s Zionist government are unlikely to shift their settlement policies. While some of the so-called ‘illegal’ outposts, consisting of little more than a few transport containers, are being removed, Netanyahu is refusing to freeze what he calls ‘natural growth’ expansion on the so-called ‘legal’ already established settlements.

The media has been full of speculation about how the US will react to Netanyahu’s intransigence. Measures under discussion include withdrawing US support for Israel in the UN. The support of the US with its power of veto on the UN Security Council is crucial to Israel. Without US support Israel would be hard put to even survive let alone prosper. However, Israel, with its massive political lobbying influence in the US, is unlikely to be too perturbed by this suggestion, indeed, the US State Department have already reiterated its full support for Israel in the UN. Withdrawing financial guarantees to Israel has also been ruled out.

Netanyahu cannot afford to back down. His whole premise of political power is based on a Greater Israel that includes, at the very least, the West Bank settlements and the non-existence of a sovereign Palestinian state. On the other hand President Obama has said the settlements must at the very least be frozen as the first step to peace with the Palestinians. From the Palestinians point of view there can be no peace while the settlements exist in the West Bank. While Abbas might be willing to talk ‘peace’, especially if money is involved, he does not have the backing of all activist Palestinians who want nothing less than a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, full right of return and a completely autonomous sovereign state that is not subordinate to any other state, particularly Israel.

With the two sides now deadlocked leaving little wriggle space for either to move, only something out of left field can shift the balance for Netanyahu.

The Zionist and Netanyahu’s Likud party’s long term aim is to establish a Greater Israel that is not threatened by Hamas and Hezbollah. Because the Zionists wish to create their vision of a Greater Israel out of the lands that both Hamas and Hezbollah are defending, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and Hezbollah in south Lebanon with both in turn being supported by Iran, Israel needs ultimately to eliminate Iran as an enemy and supporter of those enemies directly impeding Israel’s ambitions.

To a certain extent, the existence of both Hamas and Hezbollah actually serve Israel’s interest inasmuch that they provide a reason for the US to continue supporting Israel. The Israeli propaganda machine also uses the existence of Hamas and Hezbollah to paint Israel as the victim. In reality, however, Israel could use its military might to easily crush Hamas, but can’t because of the world outcry if it did so for no apparent reason. To a much lesser extent, the same applies to Hezbollah though a full-on war against Hezbollah would be a very bloody affair but one which militarily Israel would prevail in. In Israel’s dealings in the past with their battles against Hezbollah, Israel has exposed its Achilles Heel. In recent times Israelis have shown a reluctance to expend too much of their own blood in chasing their cause. The advent of the internet and its proliferation over the past decade, especially when coupled with today’s modern global communications systems that is readily available just about everywhere, has made it almost impossible for the Israelis to hide from the world and, importantly, ordinary Israelis despite Israeli censorship, what they are doing in the places they attack.

It is for this reason that Israel, even more so now than ever before, needs to always to have a casus belli with which to attack their enemies. And, if they can’t covertly provoke their enemies into providing a casus belli then it is not beyond them to create one themselves by using a false flag event which they subsequently blame on those they wish to attack..

Now, more than ever, Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing Zionists are in dire need of just such an event which will allow them attack Iran as well as Hamas and Hezbollah and bring the US back on side with support.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
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